


uneasy lies the head that wears the crown

by skatingsplits



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Politics, Angry Pining, F/M, aka the masriel british politics au nobody asked for, just two absolute fools being petty, nearly resolved sexual tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 04:09:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20736002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatingsplits/pseuds/skatingsplits
Summary: He can't even check his Twitter feed without seeing her name or hearing a soundbite, her melodic voice wrapping harsh conservativism into palatable chunks for the apathetic public. She's so convincing, he could almost be swayed by the Conservative Party’s favourite poster girl himself. If, that is, he didn't already know that there was a heartless, conniving despot hiding under those perfect teeth and Sarah Burton suits.





	uneasy lies the head that wears the crown

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I cannot believe I actually finished a HDM fic but here we are!  
2\. This is technically an our world British politics AU but I played pretty fast and loose with the actual workings of British politics because this is fic and I am lazy. Unless you're ride or die for the inner workings of the House of Commons, it hopefully won't matter too much.  
3\. It probably doesn't need saying but the internalised misogyny and general insensitivity belong to Marisa and Asriel, not to me.

**i.**

  
In theory, Marisa isn’t averse to having her face on the front page of every newspaper in the country. She just hadn’t expected it to happen like this.

  
Every paper tells a different story. In the cheapest tabloids, she’s a disgusting, heartless seductress whose insatiable sexual appetite has brought down two blameless members of the most powerful political parties in the country. According to the tamer conservative broadsheets, she’s a poor, stupid young widow, helplessly seduced away from all that’s right and proper by her debauched communistic lover. And the left-leaning newsletter paint her as a vicious fascist harpy who schemed with her government comrades to ruin the career of the Socialists’ golden boy. The actual truth falls somewhere in between all these sweeping generalisations and ridiculous assumptions but even Marisa never quite manages to figure out where.

  
To be perfectly fair, she doesn’t get much opportunity. Just as quickly as the scandal flares up, it’s squashed back down again. Her husband’s death is ruled an accident (no doubt thanks to some strings being pulled by the rich relations Asriel likes to pretend he doesn’t have) and although he manages to escape prosecution, Asriel himself is bumped down to the very back of the back benches and told in no uncertain terms that he won’t be running for re-election. With no husband, no lover and not even enough lingering notoriety to keep her warm at night, Marisa slinks off to Oxford to lick her wounds and finish the degree that her ill-fated marriage had so rudely interrupted.

  
Life as an academic has its compensations but by the time she hits thirty, languishing in the university’s only remaining women’s college no longer feels like Marisa’s cup of tea. Her research grants have dried up, the other scholars hate her guts and to top it all off, Asriel’s face has started appearing in the newspapers again. It hardly seems fair. While she’s practically hidden away in a cloister, he’s swanning around London, all but confirmed to be the next Leader of the Opposition and nobody seems to care about a silly little thing like manslaughter anymore. It's irritating, and Marisa tells herself that it’s merely irritation that bubbles up in the pit of her stomach when she hears the rough edge of his voice half-hidden by his crisp, plummy vowels on the radio. She quells the memories that come along with it as quickly as she can but Asriel always had a habit of being where he wasn't wanted and she can't quite make herself forget how it felt to hear that voice in her ear as they laid in the darkness, whispering promises that were intoxicating and terrifying in equal measure. Even now (although she’d rather die than admit it), that voice is enough to spur her into action. After all, if Asriel can rise from the ashes of ignominy, why on earth shouldn’t she?

  
It turns out to be almost depressingly easy. Marisa hadn’t been stupid enough to lose touch with all her old friends and a gratifying number of them are moved enough by a carefully concocted sob story to whisper a word in the Prime Minister’s ear; the devastating tale of the poor, neglected widow of his former right hand man, stagnating in a state of social and intellectual starvation when she’s still _so_ devoted to his causes, what a _waste_ it is, if only there was _something_ he could do for her...

**ii**.

  
The sight of her face on TV is still enough to completely fuck up his morning. He's in the middle of an endless flow of meetings, dashing between a photo op Serafina set up with a bunch of harried social workers in East London and grovelling for funding from an old school friend's father in Knightsbridge. The brief pit-stop was merely meant to be a change of clothes- high street jeans and t-shirt for the social workers, Savile Row two-piece for the decrepit peer- but the blaring of BBC News in his office has put paid to that. Because, even after all this time, Asriel still hasn't learnt to leave well enough alone.

  
It's not even as if it's a rare occurrence. He hates the government with a burning passion but he has to admit that they obviously know a good thing when they've got it; Marisa is permanently plastered all over the TV, the radio, the papers, spinning every controversial policy or MP's mishap into gold. He can't even check his Twitter feed without seeing her name or hearing a soundbite, her melodic voice wrapping harsh conservativism into palatable chunks for the apathetic public. She's so convincing, he could almost be swayed by the Conservative Party’s favourite poster girl himself. If, that is, he didn't already know that there was a heartless, conniving despot hiding under those perfect teeth and Sarah Burton suits. If he valued his sanity, he'd change the channel, switch the set off, get on with his day and the thousand things on his schedule that have nothing to do with Marisa Coulter, Minister for Education and the Prime Minister’s golden girl. But he doesn't. He never does. After all, if he valued his sanity, he wouldn't have gotten into politics in the first place.

  
So he watches as Marisa smiles at the interviewer, who looks about twelve and obviously has no idea what's hit him, one tastefully manicured hand toying with the rosary that's half-hidden by the expensive fabric of her shirt. He watches as her eyes fill up with effortlessly summoned tears as she talks about the half a million children living below the poverty line, the way they make her eyes sparkle without ever actually doing anything as gauche as spilling down her cheeks and ruining her mascara. And he watches as the poor young journalist asks what she thinks her party’s chances are in the upcoming election and Marisa's mouth splits into a wide, cruel smile. It's just for a fraction of a second, before she manages to rearrange her face back into the patronising half-smile that's perennially present when she's in public. It's highly unlikely that anybody who wasn't intimately acquainted with the minutiae of her facial expressions would have even noticed. But that’s the smile that he still, despite his best efforts with alcohol and benzodiazepines, dreams about far too often, the smile that’s just truly, utterly Marisa. Fuck. She’s still talking, spouting off absolute nonsense about the government’s secondary education policies and although what she’s saying makes his blood boil, he can’t bring himself to tear his eyes away. He’s late, he’s furious, he’s frustratingly aroused and it isn’t even 10am yet. Chalk it down to yet another day of his life that Marisa Coulter has managed to ruin simply by being herself.

  
Asriel spends the rest of the day in a rage that bemuses his staffers; he rails at old Lord Chester so angrily that the man ends up making a donation just to get him to go away, he nearly fires Lee for bringing him tea instead of coffee, and he drafts five separate, vicious emails to the Conservative Party’s office correcting a minuscule error Marisa had made on youth employment statistics. Nothing helps. When the problem is Marisa, nothing ever will (he makes an intern send the email anyway and for a moment he feels childishly, pettily better. But only for a moment).

**iii**.

  
There’s enough tension in her shoulders to snap a steel beam in half but the sweet smile on Marisa’s face doesn’t fade, even when the Prime Minister lays a condescending hand on her arm for the third time in as many minutes. The man has been chattering away incessantly for nearly quarter of an hour but he still hasn’t managed to actually say anything. She notices the beads of sweat on his brow, the shirt that’s a size too small because he isn’t self-aware enough to realise he’s getting fat, the clamminess of his hand as he rests it on her forearm. Revulsion prickles sourly at her skin but her face doesn’t so much as twitch. As always, Marisa keeps smiling.

  
She’s waiting for something, anything, that she can actually respond to, anything that isn’t just torturous monologuing about how difficult it is to be a man in charge. The little noises of agreement and sympathy come naturally to her; Edward used to talk for hours on the same subject and Marisa would always sit and smile. They even use the same phrases- “the noble hardship of authority” is definitely something she’d heard spilling out of Edward’s self-important mouth, and now the Prime Minister has said it at least twice. Perhaps they all have to take a class at Eton, in preparation for the inevitable day when they slide comfortably into government ministries. “Rhetoric for Bloviating Imbeciles”. At this point, she could teach it herself. Keep your shoulders back and your chin up and never, ever say anything that could actually be construed as meaningful.

  
The man has drifted into what can only be described as bitching about his opponent and Marisa shifts slightly in her chair. Not exactly her favourite topic of conversation at the best of times, any discussion of Asriel has become unbearable since it turned out that he might actually be the first Socialist candidate in a century to have a chance of beating the Conservatives at the polls. Even his most vehement detractors have gained a begrudging edge of respect in their voices when his name is mentioned and it makes Marisa’s blood boil. That same level of respect is certainly not afforded to her in the halls of Westminster; despite having won a higher percentage of the vote at the last election than any other member of her party, she also has tits and a cunt, which are apparently enough to make it perfectly reasonable for her colleagues to treat her with as much regard as they would a housemaid. That is to say, none.

  
“And the man abjectly refuses to make a decent show of fellowship,” the Prime Minister is saying when Marisa tunes back in. “Every general election for the last two hundred years, we’ve held this bipartisan banquet. A display of unity, you know, to show the populace that we can, when necessary, work together. Not so different after all, and all that sort of thing.”

  
It takes all the will in the world to stop her lip from curling into a sneer. If there are two men in the world who are more different than the weak, tractable creature in front of her and Asriel, Marisa would have a very hard time finding them. Luckily, the Prime Minister seems to take her expression as a sign of approbation and pushes on, banging his fist on the table in a gesture that’s evidently supposed to be impressive.

  
“Of course, it’s no secret that he has no respect for tradition. But to violate them so flagrantly! He won’t even entertain the idea! However...” he meets her eyes suddenly, with a look on his face that he probably thinks is cunning and conspiratorial but actually comes off as constipated. “A little word in his ear from just the right person might do the world of good, mightn’t it?”

  
As sly as he apparently perceives himself to be, Marisa gets the hint instantly and, instantly, she feels her pulse start to thud a little harder. She doesn’t get invited to dinners at Downing Street and god forbid he schedule a meeting with her about the budget cuts, but for this, he’ll deign to see her one-on-one?

  
“I believe you may have been misinformed, sir.” Her voice is colder than ice, far colder than she ever usually allows it to be, and the Prime Minister recoils. Taking a hold of herself, Marisa paints a smile back onto her face and injects some warmth into her tone as she leans in and lowers her voice a little, as though she’s sharing some delicate secret. “In this case, I’m afraid any whispered word from me would be far more likely to hinder your cause, not help it.”

  
The man’s face breaks into understanding, something that he doesn’t seem to experience very often. For a moment, Marisa could almost feel sorry for him; being kept afloat by conniving councillors and desperate strategies in a world he no longer understands when, really, it would be better for everyone if he was left to drown. Until, that is, his hand drops from her arm to her knee and a vague approximation of something that a blind man might consider a charming smile creeps onto his face.

  
“I’m sure that can hardly be true. What man wouldn’t be swayed by a beautiful young woman like you?”  
As she always does, Marisa smiles. And she keeps smiling as she sadly assures the Prime Minister that she wishes with all her heart that she was able to help, shakes his hand and makes her usual graceful exit. It isn’t until she’s safely ensconced in her car, partition up, that she lets her face drop and her mouth settle into a hard line.

  
The worst thing is that the oafish bastard has managed to hit a sore spot. Not only has he disregarded any attribute she has other than for whom she’s opened her legs, but he apparently only values her for the one thing that she can’t do, the one area where all the skills and subterfuges in the world can’t possibly help her. It stings, almost literally; she has a headache that it’s going to take a mammoth-sized glass of cabernet to dispel.

  
It doesn’t help that when she checks her phone, his face is almost the first thing she sees. He’s always headline fucking news, whether it’s a puff piece about the teen vote or last week’s earnestly pretentious interview on the wage gap. _Please_. As if Asriel could possibly give a fuck about the wage gap. Or about anything other than his own tunnel-visioned agenda, despite what he might have charmed and blustered the electorate into believing. The article that’s making the rounds today leans more towards the first category; yet another brainless young actress who wants to be known for more than getting her tits out on Game of Thrones has declared herself a proud supporter of the opposition. It’s the fashionable thing to do, apparently; getting your picture in the paper with Asriel’s arm around your shoulders and a tacky little Socialist Party badge pinned to your lapel as you pretend to give a damn about unemployment levels does more for your social standing than booking the cover of Vogue. Marisa rolls her eyes hard enough to seriously strain some ocular muscles but she reads the article regardless. She always does.

**iv**.

Asriel knows that he should never have agreed to this fucking ridiculous sham of a soiree. ‘A show of fellowship’ is what the increasingly desperate emails from the Prime Minister’s office had called it but Asriel has spent enough time in his life in banquet halls like this one to know that it was merely an excuse for the practically indistinguishable members of both parties to eat too much, drink too much and reminisce about buggering each other senseless between rugby games at boarding school. He’d said no to every single pleading missive. All except for the terse, two-line message that had made his shirt collar feel uncomfortably tight when he’d seen the name of the sender in his inbox. Fucking pathetic. He can easily stand firm against the entire bloody Cabinet but she clicks her fingers and he comes running like Pavlov's dog. Asriel barely even remembers accepting; the next thing he knew, the government had issued its gloating press release and Serafina had burst into his office, quite reasonably asking what the fuck he thought he was doing. He hadn’t had an answer then and he doesn’t have one now.

  
Well, that isn't strictly true. The answer is approximately five feet and six inches tall with perfectly coiffed dark hair and is currently directly in his line of sight, murmuring something into the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s ear. But saying that to his team of enthusiastic liberal staffers who hate the woman’s guts probably wouldn't have had very productive results. Especially not if he'd been prescient enough to inform them that he'd spend the vast majority of the evening hidden away in a corner, tracking the woman in question with his eyes as if his life depended on it.

  
It’s not that he’d actually forgotten how well Marisa can hold a room. It just doesn’t happen to be something that he’s enough of a masochist to dwell on. But god knows, he’s being painfully reminded of it now. She flits from group to group, throwing back her head in what he knows is a carefully constructed depiction of a careless laugh with one gaggle of drunken ministers, listening intently with a prettily sombre expression on her face to another. Her glass is always full but Asriel can tell that she isn't even tipsy. She’d never let herself cede enough control to be, not here, in a room full of people who relish each other's slightest slip-up. But he remembers far too well the way she looked when they'd spent the evening taking turns to sip from a bottle of expensive scotch whisky, passionately arguing about anything and everything under the sun. He can no longer remember the details of a single one of those arguments but her appearance is indelibly printed in his mind, wrapped up in his bedsheets with her hair down and her face as unguarded as he'd ever seen it before or since. Or so he'd thought, at least. Perhaps that had been a lie too. If anyone on earth was capable of that kind of calculated uncalculatedness, it was Marisa. The thought makes Asriel grit his teeth and turn away, the sight of her suddenly turning his stomach. When he's sharply commanded a passing server to bring him another drink and steeled himself to find her again, that unmistakable dark head is nowhere to be seen. He rises from his chair, finding himself angry for reasons that he can't quite articulate even to himself, and makes his way out of the room.

**v**.

  
The prickling on the back of her neck is enough to tell her that it’s him. Turning around would be conceding defeat so Marisa keeps her gaze fixed firmly out of the window and takes a long, steadying sip of her drink, flatly ignoring her own shaky hand. The door closes and for a second, she both delights and despairs in the thought that he might have simply closed the door behind him and left. But then there are footsteps, softened by the thick plushness of the carpet yet still perfectly audible in the deep silence, and then the clinking of crystal and she knows without looking that he’s poured himself two fingers of whiskey with just a splash of soda water and still, she doesn’t turn around.  
When Marisa had slipped away from the endless stream of chattering monkeys who called themselves MPs, half of her had genuinely wanted to be alone, to not have to smile and nod in the face of supremely unimportant nonsense for just five minutes. Still, she'd secreted herself in the first room on the first corridor as she'd exited the dining hall and hadn't done anything as sensible as locking the door behind her. Because the other half had been hoping against hope that he would follow. She doesn't even really know why- the most likely outcome is a bitter exchange of harsh words that might feel satisfying in the moment but will undoubtedly leave a sour taste in her mouth tomorrow. That's what's always happened on the sporadic occasions they've been forced into each other's company over the last few years; sarcasm and spite, nothing more and nothing less. But at present, they both stay as silent as the grave.

  
Eventually, however, the peace is broken, as any peace between them always is.

  
“Marvellous man, your Prime Minister, isn't he?” Asriel speaks as casually as if they were friendly old drinking buddies, far more casually than he ever did when she spent all her nights in his bed, and Marisa hates him for it. “Caving so quickly to the right over those benefit cuts, that was obviously the work of a true leader. I’ve never known anyone else who has the backbone of a jellyfish hold down such a difficult job, I'm really very impressed.”

  
“Oh, please,” injecting enough venom into her voice to put a viper to shame, Marisa finally turns around and is incensed by the pure smugness on Asriel's face. It couldn't even really be called a smile; it’s just pure, unadulterated self-satisfaction and she curses herself for rising to his bait so fucking easily. “Don't pretend you could give a damn about benefit cuts. You might have the great unwashed masses fooled but you can't fool me. You're riding the shoulders of the lower classes to relevance because you've somehow managed to convince them that you aren't just a grasping, inbred would-be tyrant who’ll say anything if you think it might get you what you want.” This time, he really does smile and Marisa feels her stomach twist, as sharp as a knife.

  
She can honestly say she isn't sure how it happened but there’s broken glass crunched beneath her heel, red wine seeping slowly into the Axminster, a strong and surprisingly calloused hand grasping her jaw and sharp teeth grazing against her already-bruising bottom lip. Her own fingers are scratching against expensive gabardine (really, when did he become such a pretentious dresser?), and then his deliberately scruffy stubble is scraping against her jaw and he's murmuring her name into her skin and she lets her eyes fall closed because she doesn't need to think right now.

  
It's almost divine, letting herself get lost in instinct and sensation. She doesn't need to carefully arrange her facial expression, she doesn’t need to come up with a perfect quip, she doesn't need to do anything. For once, she can just be. She can just want. And she wants so badly. Her teeth nip at sensitive flesh, in the place above his collarbone that her mouth remembers of its own accord will make Asriel grasp her a little tighter. Her muscle memory doesn’t let her down; he pins her back against the window and her head hits the glass with a deliciously painful thud. A murmured endearment falls from his lips but Marisa ignores it in favour of sliding her leg up around his waist and sinking her teeth into his neck again, drinking in the harsh groan that it invokes. Asriel’s hands are stroking her thigh, sliding into her hair, his mouth on her jaw and it's like she's enveloped in him, drowning in him.  
His thumb slides over dampened silk and Marisa allows herself one long, drawn-out moment of bliss before she lets reality start to sordidly seep back in. They're ten feet and a thin wall away from every major political player in the country and half of its press, all of whom would have a field day if they found out that she was once again risking her career for the sake of fucking Asriel, and she simply cannot afford to let this happen again. He makes her weak, he always has. She pushes at his shoulder, disentangling herself from his embrace as suddenly as she'd slipped into it.

  
“There’s a time and a place for slumming it with the losing side and, I can assure you, this isn’t it.” Hopefully she looks far more cool and collected than she feels. Asriel certainly doesn't; her lipstick is smeared over his face and his neck like warpaint, the luxurious material of his shirt is rumpled and the look in his eye is enough to take her breath away all over again.

  
“Marisa...” is all he says and her breath catches in her throat. She hasn't heard him say her name in more than a decade. Her pulse races as she waits for him to continue, a wild half-formed thought fleeting through her mind that whatever he asked her now, she'd feel powerless to say anything but yes. But his face settles into that supercilious half-smirk and heavy, oppressive silence fills the room again. Forming her own face into a scornful, ice-cold smile, Marisa sweeps from the room with as much dignity as a woman with lipstick all over her face and despair in the pit of her stomach can muster.

**vi.**

Winning the election feels almost as good as he'd imagined it would. He's the youngest Prime Minister since Pitt, he has the largest margin in a century and his victory has sent the Conservatives into a tailspin that makes his soul sing. There is, however, as he's come to realise there always is, a fly in the ointment. The fly in question is beautiful, intelligent, and smiles that dreadful, magnificent cruel smile at him every time the House is in session and she takes her place across from him as the shiny new leader of the opposition. Cross-party politics haven't been this fraught in living memory, as the grey-faced old spectres on the back benches never miss an opportunity to remind him. Still,it could be worse. He's always despised platitudes but, Asriel thinks as Marisa poses an unnecessarily wordy question about tax brackets and smiles demurely at the tumultuous applause from the Conservative benches, there is some merit to the idea that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Especially when you can never quite make up your mind which one they really are.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this, come find me on tumblr at marisacoulterr and yell at me about these two wonderful flaming trashcans who are both terrible for and perfect for each other


End file.
